With CES 2025 just around the corner, companies have been eager to give us a sneak peek at what they have up their sleeves. However, not all of them can say that they've already won several CES 2025 awards before the doors have even opened. LG is one of those lucky few who can, as its new monitor has picked up several trophies before the public even saw it.

LG’s new microwave mounted above its range, thereby ‘eliminating the need to bend down and check the oven manually.’ | Image: LG LG has responded to Samsung in the battle to slap displays on every home appliance you own, culminating in the LG Signature microwave which puts a superfluous 27-inch LCD touchscreen and speakers into an appliance you probably don’t even need. LG says the microwave’s display provides “an immersive entertainment experience” that’ll surely prevent the onset of buyer’s remorse at having overpaid for a potential advertising machine centrally located in your kitchen. And when paired with LG’s oven, it “conveniently shows the cooking progress of dishes in the range, eliminating the need to bend down and check the oven manually.”In 2023, LG announced plans to transform its hardware-based business into a platform-based service model that continuously generates profits. In September, the company started displaying full-screen ads on its idle televisions. Image: LG LG’s latest Signature devices. The company’s second-generation Signature lineup of Wi-Fi appliances continues the tradition of putting a giant transparent OLED “Instaview” touchscreen on its fridge, alongside smaller LCDs on its washer and dryer. LG’s Signature displays can be used to operate the local appliance, access entertainment, and control devices in the LG smart home. The announcement follows Samsung recently announcing a wider variety of display choices on its home appliances, ranging from 4.3 inches all the way up to 32 inches. It’s all part of the company’s strategy to put “screens everywhere,” instead of easy-to-use buttons and dials that rarely fail and are cheap to replace.LG hasn’t announced any prices, countries of availability, or shipping dates for its new Signature lineup of appliances. But we’ll surely learn more when everything is demonstrated at the giant CES show which kicks off on January 7th in Las Vegas.

You know, I kind of forgot that Half-Life 3 (or Episode 3, for that matter) was one of gaming's longest-standing memes. There was a time when Valve CEO Gabe Newell couldn't so much as cough without people believing it was a reference to Gordon Freeman's newest adventures. However, that old flame has once again reignited, as Valve is reportedly bringing people in to playtest an early build of Half-Life 3.

Building your own NAS is one of the best upgrades you can make to your home network, whether you're going all out with a TrueNAS setup or just setting up a basic file share. Distributed, resilient, and high-performance storage is often the bottleneck in the highest performance systems, with considerations like locking, asynchronous operations, and durability becoming serious problems to solve. Such systems can often be extremely complex and prohibitively expensive, reserved for only the largest enterprises with the most intense storage needs.

The Raspberry Pi 5 is the latest entry in the uber-popular SBC lineup, and it packs enough upgrades to make it a worthwhile addition to any tinkerer's workshop. From its superior quad-core Arm Cortex A76 processor to the new PCIe Gen 2 interface and a dedicated power button, this powerful little SBC is not only great for hobbyist projects, but can also serve as a portable PC for everyday tasks.

It's the end of the road for PCIe 4.0 SSDs, which debuted in 2019. The best drives are hitting the limit of what's possible with PCIe 4.0, which begs the question: how much faster is Samsung's 990 Pro than the 980 Pro, two of the best drives on the market, and which one is the best overall for laptops and desktops? For most users, thankfully, the choice won't be difficult to make.

DJI’s new fast car charger connected to a DJI power station. | Image: DJI DJI has quietly introduced a powerful new car charger for its giant portable batteries. The $299 / €269 Power 1kW Super Fast Car Charger can charge the company’s expanding lineup of power stations at up to 1000W from your car’s alternator when the engine is running.This new class of (nearly) do-it-yourself alternator chargers are having a moment now that the most popular makers of solar generators and power stations have embraced DC-to-DC chargers. I wouldn’t have survived without one when remote working from my van last summer.Once the Power 1kW is mounted inside your vehicle and connected to the car’s battery via the included 5m (16 feet 5 inches) fused cable, it then connects to the proprietary SDC port of the dongle-happy DJI Power 1000 power station I recently reviewed. It’ll also charge DJI’s 2048Wh Power 2000 Expansion Batteries when daisy-chained together with SDC cables for up to 11kWh of stackable storage capacity. The Power 1kW can also be configured to reverse-charge your car’s battery to prevent battery drain.At full power the DJI Power 1kW Super Fast Car Charger can charge the Power 1000’s 1024Wh battery in just over an hour’s drive. However, out of the box the Power 1kW is pegged to 500W of charging output. To reach 1000W you have to purchase yet another dongle — the $25 DJI Power Dongle — and then adjust the setting to 1000W in the app. Fortunately, DJI is bundling that dongle as a “free gift” with new purchases of the DJI Power 1kW Super Fast Car Charger, at least in the US.DJI’s announcement follows the arrival of the 800W EcoFlow Alternator Charger I reviewed last summer and the new 560W Bluetti AC500 announced in the fall (review is coming). EcoFlow’s charger, like DJI’s, uses a proprietary connector making it best suited to charge its own giant batteries, whereas the Bluetti AC500 can charge solar generators and power stations from nearly every manufacturer, but at half the rate of the DJI. Of course, all this assumes that your vehicle is fitted with a high-capacity alternator that can spare the amps.

Intel's new Battlemage GPUs are now out in the wild, and if the company's own reports are to be trusted, they seem to be selling more of them than expected. It's a nice story at the end of a rough year for the chip giant and a close shave for its GPU department: there were rumors that Intel would shutter its entire high-end graphics card venture if Battlemage flopped. Fortunately, that seems to have been averted, as the company is reportedly planning a 24GB version for 2025.

The state of PC gaming doesn't exactly fill me with confidence, considering the string of broken launches, cash grabs, and straight-up scams we've had to deal with in the last few years. Despite having more powerful hardware and advanced development techniques than ever before, AAA games are increasingly characterized by unoptimized performance and visuals that seem to be going backward.

Windows is a versatile operating system that allows you to install software from official and third-party sources to enhance its usability. Most users only rely on popular apps like MS Office, Photoshop, Chrome, and more for their work or leisure on Windows PCs. However, there are numerous lesser-known apps that can significantly boost your productivity, efficiency, and overall experience of using Windows OS.

Modern Windows laptops are designed to handle a variety of tasks, from light work like calculating to heavy workloads like gaming. But when it comes to leaving your machine ON all the time, the decision isn't as simple as it might seem.

Notion is one of the most popular organizational and productivity platforms available, recently surpassing 100M users. Its block-based system is highly flexible, allowing users to create customized solutions for managing data. Whether used as a time tracker, project management tool, CRM, event planner, or simply for organizing notes, Notion enables users to build systems tailored to their needs. This broad applicability made it an appealing choice when a multimillion-dollar outdoor advertising company approached me to design a custom system.